The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-02-19
EMPLOYMENT FOR AMERICAN
WOMEN

or co education, or that dreadful claim
OF the suffrage is silenced for moment,
it Is but for q moment:
1.-THE roar that for space did fail
Now trebly laundering fills the gale"
and "larger opportunities" is the cry.
1t Is logical and inevitable cry.
When it was conceded that the revered
sphere of women" permitted them to
hold property, and to be taxed and to
make bargains and wills, without the be-
nignant and salutary interference of'men,
who as men, know SO much better how to
dispose OF women's property than wo.
men themselves, the only safe ground
was abandoned, the foodgates were open
ed, and cataclysm was distinctly invit-
ed.
Mayor Hewitt, just before his inau-
guration, said to reporter that "there
are comparatively few avenues open to
women for employment, and all but one
OF them are overcrowded." But it was
Immediately answered that there are
about one hundred selected occupations
mentioned in the census, and that in four
fifths of these women are employed.
They are excluded from those that de-
mand especial muscular vigor, they are
not blacksmiths, maeons or car drivers,
but in twenty of the mechanical and
manufacturing Industries of New York,
more women than men are employed.
Moreover, the modern inventions, the tel
egrapb, the telephone, the type writer,
open occupations for which women are
especially fitted and in which they are
very generally employed. They do not,
however, generally receive the same
wages for the same work. This irregu-
larity is explained by the political econo-
mists by saying that women are not in
general SO strong as men, and that by
their own constitutions, and by the con-
stitution of society, equal continuity and
permanence of labor cannot be expected
from them.
There is no reason to doubt, however,
that the course of events which has SO
greatly enlarged their industrial oppor-
tunity will gradually, and even speedily
introduce them1in all employments for
which they are not untitled. The fond
idolators of s'woman's sphere" must
console themselves as they can. They
will naturally lament the vanishing Wis
ion of the last best gift to man sitting
forever in rosy light upon a satin cush-
ion and sewing up a seam, but they will
perhaps take heart when they discover
that man, her natural protector, can no
longer sequester her fortune to his own
support, and that the oak, around which
the vine with tender tendrils is designed
by nature to cling so closely, can no long
er compel the clinging il the vine finds
the trunk too gnarled and sharp. There
are those, indeed, who think that the
sphere of woman is in no greater peril
from enlarged opportunities of labor than
the sphere Of man, and who see with COM
posure the end of a great deal of non
sense.
But there is one employment open to
women which Mr.. Hewitt thinks is not
overcrowded. This is domestic service
and women whom the conditions of de-
mand and supply exclude from other oc-
equations are exhorted upon all sides to
find in the kitchen haven of rest. 1t is
evident, indeed, that great many of
them need no exhortation to this end, for
there is no kitchen in the land in which
women are not found. But this is not
denied. The trouble is that capable
women prefer any other employment
than domestic service, and resort to it
only when other ways are closed. Mr..
Hewitt says truly that there is nothing
humiliating in domestic service. So
thought George Herbert:
"Who sweeps a room as for thy laws
Makes that and tn action fine."
That, indeed is the spirit which makes
all drudgery divine. But in dealing
practically with the question we are COM
PEELED to recall the remark Of the wise
father to his married daughter, who was
pouring out the familiar complaint of the
kitchen, "My dear, you cannot expect all
the cardinal virtues for thirteen dollars a
month"
Mr.. Hewitt not only justly says that
there is nothing essentially humiliating
in domestic service, but he says that in
the home of his youth ''the servant girl
always sat at the same table with the
family" and did not regard herself in
position Of social inferiority. This is
still the custom and the feeling in many of
the more secluded parts of New England.
The word which aptly describes the SHRED
girl in the house, or the SHRED man"
in the field, is "help." The same SEN
timent of the relation leads to the use of
the word "hands" to describe the work
men in a factory. To hire the labor of
others is merely to multiply your own
power, your own hands. The sense of
equality remains. There is no feeling of
abasement or humiliation. Mr.. Hewitt
proceeds to say that it would be very for
tunate and greatly aid the solution of the
problem if the old relation between the
servant and the family could be restored.
1t was, in fact, that of the master and the
apprentice who lived in the masters fam
lily as a member OF it.